


You're Home

by faintstark



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Nebula & Tony Stark Friendship, Nebula as Morgan's Sister, Parent Tony Stark, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), basically i'm spewing angst to cope, just mentioned once but be safe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-24
Updated: 2019-06-24
Packaged: 2020-05-16 09:13:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19315138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/faintstark/pseuds/faintstark
Summary: 22 days. That's how long Nebula was stuck together with Tony Stark bum-fuck-nowhere in space.She wished she never went through that, because this ache that she felt was too much to bear.[Or Nebula, after Tony Stark's funeral.]





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**Author's Note:**

> ok so this is hardly the first fic i wrote, but it's the one i'm proud enough to actually post here. kudos and comments are very much appreciated!
> 
> i'd like to thank the whole marvel writers club gc on twitter for always supporting me and actually giving me the courage to post this. also huge thanks to both [tyler](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kinetics) and [mj](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kxbooms) for being my biggest supporters, ilysm <33
> 
> anyway, enough with me ranting. hope you enjoy!

Nebula flexed her left hand as she kept her gaze glued to the lake. She'd visited Earth a few times already, but this was by far her worst visit. This was by far the worst situation she had ever been in. She wanted nothing more than to jump on her spaceship and run somewhere faraway, presumably where she won’t hear any words about this stupid planet where her feet were standing on.

The mourners passed her by, only sparing her a glance. The other members of the Guardians were talking silently somewhere to her left, and she had no intention to join them. The Gamora from 2014 ran away after the battle, and they were probably talking about that. She could catch up later.

She lifted her left hand and stared at it. Part of it was metal now. _His_ metal. She clenched her jaw, and flexed her fingers again. It flowed naturally. It didn’t feel like a machine. It felt like it’d been a part of her since the beginning.

It felt like the part of him that she failed was stuck with her.

She bailed her hand to a fist, then. Her right hand grabbed a rock from the ground, and without so much of a second thought, she threw it to the lake.

The rock bounced a few times on the lake’s surface before it finally sunk in. Nebula could feel the shudder that ran through her, and the gazes behind her back, but she stood her ground and kept glaring at the lake.

This was unfair. Why did she never get what she wanted? For once, she’d found safety, and now that thing was taken from her as well. What did she do wrong? Where did she do wrong? The more she thought about it, the more she spiraled down into an emotion that was familiar.

The emotion she felt when Thanos didn’t answer about Gamora. The one she felt when she realized her sister won’t come back. The one she felt when she lost someone important to her.

Grief, Nebula thought, was something really scary.

“Hey,” Someone called softly from her right, and Nebula glanced to see Rhodey approaching her slowly, as if afraid he would scare her. She noticed his red eyes, and she averted her gaze to look back to the lake.

Rhodey settled to stand beside her. They both stayed silent for a while. Both of them staring at the lake, the air heavy with grief around them.

“I miss him,” Rhodey said quietly, and Nebula glanced at him again. His eyes were glassy and faraway, as if he was looking at an intense slideshow of memories instead of a calm lake. He chuckled bitterly. “It’s only been a few hours and I miss him already.”

Nebula flexed her left hand again. Then she looked down to Rhodey’s legs. She realized it when they were at Morag. They were both eerily similar. Part of them were not... what they were before. And now they were even more similar. Now they both have a part of him stuck with them forever.

Rhodey noticed her staring and looked to his feet. He responded by kicking a rock, making it roll until it fell to the lake. He huffed, and it sounded like annoyance. Not at her, she knew that. She knew their mutual feeling over their extended body parts.

“I hate reminders.” Nebula mumbled. “My body, Thanos replaced it with machines. It’s a reminder of what he had done to me. And I can’t escape it. And now this.” She didn’t elaborate what ‘this’ was. Instead, she picked another stone and threw it to the lake. Harder than before. It made quite the splash when it hit the body of the water.

Rhodey hummed in something like agreement. He kicked another rock, harder too. It flew to the lake and made the water ripple. “Even without these, I don’t think we’ll forget him that easily.”

Nebula turned to look at him, and found that Rhodey was staring at her too. He had a tight smile plastered to his face, new tear tracks on his cheeks.

Nebula didn’t know what got into her. Maybe it was Rhodey’s clear grief. Maybe it was the blackness around them. Maybe it was her own grief, too overwhelming for her to keep to herself. Maybe it was the evidence of _him_ , here and there and everywhere.

She tugged Rhodey’s arm, and pulled him into a hug.

Rhodey hugged her back almost immediately—and fiercely too. He sniffed and sobbed to her shoulder, and if Nebula had the ability to “cry”, she knew she would do the same. Instead, she put her head to Rhodey’s shoulder as they both shook under each other’s grasp.

Grief, Nebula thought, was something she despised. Maybe even more than she despised her dad.

She remembered the shaky hand that offered her the last space food. She remembered the smile and the “you won” after a game of paper soccer. She remembered the desperate eyes, the stab wound, the constant blue light. She remembered the soft gaze and gentle hands on her arm and the “this is all fucked up, I can help you fix it when we’re back”. She remembered something, someone, that maybe, just maybe, she unconsciously called family.

Another evidence of that so-called family tugged her pants, and she looked down to see the tiny human girl looking up at her curiously.

Rhodey broke the hug first as he sniffed and rubbed his face with his sleeves. “Morgan,” He croaked out. “What are you doing? Where’s Happy?”

“Uncle Happy’s buying me cheeseburgers.” Morgan answered innocently, and Nebula heard the way Rhodey choked on his tears. “Everyone’s crying. Miss, why are you not crying?”

“Morgan, that’s not—” Rhodey started, but Nebula waved her hand as she crouched down in front of Morgan.

“Take a rest, Rhodey.” She told him. “Don’t worry, I’ll take care of her.”

Morgan looked up to Rhodey at that, and she tilted her head. Nebula couldn’t stop the way her heart ached as the child’s expression was _another_ reminder.

“Uncle Rhodey, are you crying over Daddy too?” She asked, and Nebula winced at the new wave of tears that fell from Rhodey’s eyes. “You can ask Uncle Happy to buy you a cheeseburger. It always helps me feel happier.”

“Let’s leave Uncle Rhodey alone for now, shall we?” Nebula said as she awkwardly put her hands under Morgan’s armpits to pick her up. It surprised her how easily she’d done it, how easily Morgan fit under her grasp and how she suddenly was carrying an actual human child. Morgan looked to her face in curiosity.

“Okay.” She responded. Nebula gave Rhodey a nod, and he gave her a grateful look in return. He scurried somewhere into the house, and Nebula was left alone with a living and breathing reminder.

“So,” Nebula started, as she racked her mind to find something to do to entertain a human child. _His_ human child. She remembered the way he used to tell stories about him, and asked her to tell stories of her in return. She decided to take the same approach. “You wanna play a game?”

Morgan perked up at the mention of game. “What kind of game?”

“You ask me a question, and I’ll tell you a story about it. Then I’ll ask you a question so you can tell yours. We play until we run out of stories to tell.”

Morgan hummed and furrowed her brows, as if she was considering the idea. It ached to think how similar that expression was for Nebula. “What’s the game called?”

“What?” Nebula asked in momentary confusion and Morgan scowled at her.

“The game’s name. Every game has a name.” Morgan said it in a familiar “duh” tone, and Nebula was so close to putting her down and running after Rhodey to have a breakdown.

“Uh,” _Come on, Nebula. Put it together._ She tried to find something, anything inside her brain to answer the child’s innocent question.

_“That’s the dumbest story I’ve ever heard.” She said, and he laughed at her._

_“You know, what’s the point of college if you’re not fucking up?” He said, hands flipping the screwdriver absentmindedly. “They called my dad after that and I had to endure two hours of him screaming, but it was worth it.” He suddenly scrunched his face. “Huh. Didn’t think I told Rhodey about what happened at home.”_

_He rubbed his cheek, almost unconsciously, and Nebula raised her eyebrow._

_“Did he hit you?” She asked quietly, and he pulled his hand down from his cheek._

_“That was the past.” He answered dismissively, and he was back to flipping the small tool with a tight smile. Fake. “And that’s the point of this game, right? To share our secrets.”_

“Our secrets.” She whispered, voice heavy with emotion, but Morgan just nodded in something like childhood innocence.

“Okay.” She said. “Are you gonna start first, Miss...?”

“Just call me Nebula.” She answered, tightening her grip on the girl. “Go on, ask me a question.”

“Okay, uhh.” Morgan tapped her hand on Nebula’s shoulder as she thought. “Who are you to me?”

Nebula tilted her head, looking at her in question. “Who am I to you?”

“Yeah, like,” The four-year-old gestured vaguely with her hand. “Peter and Harley are my brothers, Happy and Rhodey are my uncles, and so on. Who are you to Daddy?”

Nebula never thought that she could cry, but that moment was the closest she would ever get to something like crying.

“I’m,” Nebula gulped. An ally, an acquaintance, a friend. “I see him as my family.”

Morgan rolled her eyes. “Be more specific! Of course I know you’re family!”

And that, right there, that felt like a stab to the chest.

Nebula crouched down because she felt like her feet won’t keep her standing, and she hid her face under Morgan’s hair to conceal her trembling lips.

“Neb…?” Morgan called, sounding concerned. She patted Nebula's back and Nebula tightened her hug in return.

_“Neb,” He called. Nebula looked up from her console to see his worried expression. “Why’s your eye twitching like that?”_

_Nebula touched her left eye, and sure enough, the machine vibrated under her grasp. She tapped it lightly, but the vibrating didn’t stop. She shrugged._

_“Never knew why. It’s like this sometimes.”_

_His expression was concerned as he sat down beside her. “I can check on it, maybe?”_

_She looked up to him, and he wilted under her gaze. “Or not. Only if you want to.”_

_Nebula looked back to her console. The status of their ship. They were slowly dying in space, and they both knew that. She thought about how Thanos never asked, how Thanos forced to change her body parts with metals._

_“Sure.” She said as she pulled the toolbox closer. “Gotta remind you that you probably don’t understand it, though.”_

_He scoffed, but Nebula could see the relief under his expression. “Please, I helped you repair this shitty ship. I think I can handle a mechanic eye.”_

And he handled the eye. He handled that and so much more. He handled them gently, he handled them with care. He made Nebula feel worthy. He made Nebula feel like maybe she belonged somewhere, that maybe she had someone for her. He didn’t just fix Nebula’s eye and arm. He fixed her heart.

Tony Stark was a mechanic after all.

Nebula felt something tickled her left cheek, and she touched it only for her fingers to come back wet. She stared at it in shock, and when she touched the corner of her eye, it was wet too. Her mechanical hand trembled without her permission and the water kept flowing. The water that came from the eye that he gave her.

_Fuck you, Tony Stark._ Nebula thought, because Tony used that word too much for her to pick on. _Fuck you for giving me the ability to cry. For being the reason that I’m crying._

She realized that she was still hugging the tiny child, then. She pulled her to arm’s length, and their eyes met. Those round, brown eyes. Those were his eyes too. He gave her that same concerned, gentle expression too.

He gave her that home, and maybe Morgan was offering her a home too.

“Does it matter?” Nebula echoed his words when he was talking about Peter Parker and Harley Keener, somewhere faraway in space. She pulled the corners of her lips up, and hoped it passed as a smile. She hoped it looked like home, too. “We’re family, and that’s the important thing.” She thought for a while, remembered his hesitant _“sons, maybe”._ “Sister, maybe?”

The bright expression that Morgan just gave her made it all worth it. “Okay!”

“Morgan!” They both looked up to Happy who was standing on the porch holding a paper bag. “Your cheeseburgers!”

Morgan turned to look at her again. “Nebula, do you want to eat cheeseburgers with me?” She offered, almost shyly, and she felt like she's getting the hang of her smiles.

“Of course.” She answered. She picked her up again, and this time her arms didn’t waver and her eye didn’t twitch involuntarily. “Our game’s not finished after all. I’m gonna tell you the story about when your dad fixed a spaceship, and then I’m gonna make _you_ tell stories.” She poked Morgan’s cheek, and she giggled.

“Wait! Spaceship? As in, the ship in space?” She asked excitedly, and Nebula snorted.

“What do you think I am? A human?” Nebula waved her hand in front of Morgan’s face and she laughed again. “I came here with a spaceship, tiny human.”

“Is Daddy an alien too?” She asked giddily, and Nebula smiled as she walked them both to his house. To home.

“No, he’s as human as you.” She stared at Morgan, really stared. Her eyes, her hair, her cheeks, her smile. She decided she’d do anything for her. “But he’s cooler than any other humans and aliens.”

Morgan gave her the “duh” expression again. “Of course he is! He’s a superhero!” She raised her hand as if she was using a repulsor.

Nebula nodded solemnly, smile still plastered on her face. “He’s a superhero, indeed.”

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading, let me know what you think! <3


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